Crow’s Row

by Julie Hockley

  When I got downstairs and didn’t see Cameron right away, I got sidetracked in the kitchen. My belly was grumbling loudly, and after days of liquid meals, I was ready for some real sustenance. I started pulling miscellaneous food out of the cupboards and managed a vague cheerfulness as Carly and Spider walked by.

  “Mornin’,” I said.

  Spider glanced at his watch and graciously pointed out, “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

  Carly appeared behind him and looked almost genuinely concerned. “Feeling better?”

  I nodded my head, stuffed a handful of animal crackers in my mouth and walked to the table, my arms full with cereal, milk, bowl, spoon, cookies, crackers. I noticed that Carly and Spider both seemed to be in a better mood; they were either happy to see me finally go, or the thought of killing someone just brought the best out of them.

  “You know you made half of my guards sick with the flu,” Spider charged.

  I hadn’t realized that, along with everything else, I was also to be held responsible for getting sick first. “Sorry,” I mumbled through my Oreos.

  When Cameron walked through the patio doors, I kept still on my chair. His dark eyes automatically came to find mine, and he slowed his walking pace. Catching himself, he quickly looked away, picked up his pace again, and kept going out through the front entrance. Carly and Spider followed him out, and I heard the front door shut behind them. In that brief moment, I knew what I had to do and immediately started planning over my bowl of cereal.

  Rocco hobbled over from the couch and grabbed himself a bowl to help me with my meal. He poured and analyzed.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked me with an accusatory tone.

  I wasn’t sure what he was referring to. When I’d looked in the mirror this morning, I thought I looked better—at least I didn’t look like walking death anymore. “Nothing. Why?”

  “You’re staring at the wall. Smiling by yourself for no reason.”

  I shrugged, removed the smile, and shoveled Captain Crunch into my mouth. I wasn’t going crazy—not anymore.

  “I did a bunch of homework while you were loafing around,” he announced. “I’m having trouble with the math homework though.”

  I would have offered to help him, but math was my worst subject—I had always found it unsettling that, no matter what I did or how I calculated a problem, there could only be one right answer in the end.

  “I was thinking that we could do a bunch of the work while the rest of them leave,” he continued when I didn’t put anything forward. “That way, next time they go, my foot will be better, and I’ll be able to go with them again.”

  I wondered if he had discussed any of this with his brother.

  “When are they leaving?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” he said dejectedly. “With most of the guards down with the flu, it’ll be pretty quiet around here.”

  The plan was quickly taking shape.

  By the time the diminished troops started pouring in for supper, Rocco and I had dug clean through a second box of cereal, and the Oreos had vanished. The minute I got up, I regretted gobbling down so much food in one sitting. I lay on the couch and spent the better part of an hour focusing on not hurling Captain Crunch. Rocco enjoyed his second supper with Tiny, Spider, and Carly. Cameron didn’t come back for the rest of the evening. When eight o’clock rolled around, Rocco was opening a bag of chips for his mid-evening snack. I’d had enough of the gorging marathon by then and excused myself to go up to bed.

  I went to work as soon as I got into Cameron’s room. With Cameron and the rest of the high-rankers gone, with most of the guards out of commission, there was no better opportunity for me to sneak away in the night. In his almost empty closet, I found an old green duffle bag and started packing. The bag looked bigger than it was; I had barely emptied three drawers and the bag was already full. I still had two drawers to go, plus all my stuff that littered the bathroom.

  I had two options: run on foot and get to the road, like Griff had planned, or try to steal one of my brother’s cars, try to drive it without crashing, try to drive fast enough to elude the flying bullets … as far as I could see, I had only one option, even if I didn’t take any pleasure in the idea of running through the woods by myself in the dark. I packed, and repacked, and realized I had no idea what I would even need to camp out in the wilderness, how long it would take me to get to the road or what I would do when I actually made it to the road. Once again, my cushy upbringing had come back to bite me … I was full of excuses. I didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t stay either. Maybe I could convince him, change his mind, make him see what I saw. But what if I couldn’t convince him? I dragged the duffle bag to the patio door and hid it behind the heavy curtain. And then I went to the small desk, found a working pen, and pulled out a piece of paper. “Cameron,” I scribbled.

  “I love you. I do believe you when you say that you love me. That’s why I have to go. If you do this, you’ll be changed forever. I can’t let that happen.”

  I took a breath, gulped, and finished.

  “I wish things could have been different. I promise to come find you someday, when things are better. Please don’t worry.” Then I signed it with love.

  I didn’t want to risk leaving the letter out until I was ready to leave. I grabbed my Rumble Fish book from under my pillow, took my Rumble Fish movie off the shelf and coiled them into a pair of jeans along with the letter. I packed the jeans on top of my stuff in the duffle bag.

  Spider would keep his word to Cameron—of this I was sure. I just hoped that he wouldn’t come for me that night.

  I spent the night listening for any sound that he was coming. Trying to keep myself awake, I sat in front of the TV, with the sound barely audible. Shortly after two o’clock in the morning, I jumped when front door squeaked opened. When I heard the clinging of dishes and cupboard doors in the kitchen, I relaxed.

  A few minutes later, Meatball came scratching at my door. In an almost imperceptible voice, Cameron ordered him down—several times. He had to climb up the stairs again to get the dog. Sitting there, knowing that he was so close, just a door between us, knowing that I wouldn’t see him again, it was very hard not running to him. But I had to stay in place for both our sakes.

  When dawn broke, I watched Carly and Spider sleepily trudge out of the pool house with their bags. By five o’clock, the troops had left the compound once more, and I finally went to bed.

  I was sad when I figured out that Meatball wasn’t coming back, begging to be let in. He had gone with the rest of them. I wouldn’t get the chance to say goodbye.

  Knowing that this was my last day at the farm, I didn’t sleep for very long after they all left. I went downstairs to wait for Rocco to get up. How could it be that the Kid would turn out to be my best friend in the whole world?

  I would miss Rocco so much. It felt like I was leaving my family behind.

  My efforts to spend as much time with Rocco as possible went somewhat wasted; he didn’t get up until well past noon. He lumbered into the living room, grunted and crashed on the other couch. We slept until mid-afternoon. I told myself that, at least he spent his last hours with me doing one of his favorite things: sleeping. As for his other favorite thing—eating—I commemorated by making a really big lasagna. We sat at the table. He wolfed down most of the lasagna. I ate without appetite.

  “You know you can come visit me any time,” I told him, spearing my cold lasagna.

  He squinted over his fork. “I already do.”

  “I don’t mean upstairs. I don’t mean here … I mean when I go back to Callister. Someday.” As I said this I realized that I wouldn’t be able to go back to the city, or back to my former life.

  “Okay?” Rocco watched me with awareness.

  I dropped the subject. I was giving myself away, getting emotional. He was getting suspicious.

  The night pushed forward, and I became more apprehensive about leaving. I had to remind mysel
f several times that I had no other choice. It was time to go—before it was too late.

  I had decided that I would follow Griff’s lead and sneak out of my room in the middle of the night by climbing down the two levels of balconies—strolling out of the front door would have been a lot easier, but a little too obvious, even with sparse guards. Climbing down without breaking my neck was as far as my plan went.

  I waited for Rocco to go to bed, but after having slept all day, he was going to be up for a while. I closed my eyes to rest before the big escape.

  Chapter Twenty:

  Terrorized

  There were firecrackers resounding in the night. Rocco was on his feet before I had even opened my eyes. He ran to the front door just as the off-duty day guards who had been unwinding in the basement bolted past him and ordered him to deadbolt the door behind them. Rocco did as he was told and limped back to the living room, his face white with terror. He had a cell phone to his ear.

  “Cam …” he half-yelled out of breath, “We have a big problem. The house is being attacked.” I heard a voice calmly responding on the phone, but couldn’t make out what was being said.

  Rocco answered the voice, “I don’t know who or how many! It’s dark out!”

  A fresh round of gunfire exploded in the distance and seemed to be moving closer fast. The voice on the other line was now rapidly speaking.

  “I’m not running, Cameron. I’m not a coward. I’ll stay and fight with the guards,” Rocco told him.

  Cameron was screaming, cursing on the line. Rocco peeled the phone away from his ear and handed it to me. “Here,” he said, “Cameron wants to talk to you.”

  I picked up the phone, “Camer—”

  Cameron didn’t give me a chance to greet him. “Emmy … Go with Rocco. Get out of the house. Run for the woods.” He was panicked. I could hear commotion behind him. Spider was barking orders, and people were yelling and shuffling rapidly.

  Rocco had tottered to the cabinet and pulled a handgun out of the drawer. He handed it to me. Steady thuds could be heard at the front door.

  “Oh, God! Cameron, they’re at the door. I think they’re trying to knock it down!” I breathed into the phone.

  Cameron swore successively and pleaded, “Emmy, get out—” and the line went dead. I looked at the phone and handed it over to Rocco.

  He examined it. “Battery’s almost dead. I forgot to charge it,” he confessed and put the useless phone back in his pocket. Rocco then started to rush me toward the patio door, but I resisted.

  “You need to get out of here, Em.”

  “I’m not going without you,” I whimpered. “We run together. Cameron said—”

  He was incredulous. “Run? Em, I can barely walk! I would just slow you down. Besides, I’m not going to let them take my brother’s house without a fight.”

  “This is no time for you to prove your toughness to your brother—”

  There was a loud snap at the front door—the doorframe was giving into the attack. The trespassers were moments away from entry.

  “Can’t you just listen to me for once? I’m not going with you, and I’ll be dead if something does happen to you because Cameron will kill me himself.” Rocco seemed to be getting calmer while I was getting closer to losing my mind.

  “Rocco, I am not leaving without you! Please …”

  Crack! The doorframe had finally given in. I jumped. Rocco swore. He looked around the room and, with all his might, pushed me into the furthest corner of the living room where there was a large wicker chest. He opened it, threw the blankets that were inside it on the couch and forced me inside. As he closed the lid, I heard the front door violently swing open and a trudge of footsteps rushing toward the living room. Through the weaves of the chest, I could see Rocco standing guard in the middle of the living room with his arms bravely crossed.

  A heavyset man led the gang into the living room. With his finger on the trigger of his machine gun, he glanced around the room and stopped to stare Rocco down. Rocco never flinched.

  “Clear!” the heavyset man yelled.

  He and the rest of his men slightly relaxed their grip on their weapons and parted to the sides. A lanky, bookish man strolled in from the back through the split of men, stopping in front of Rocco. Unlike the sweaty and agitated men that backed him, the man was tranquil, unconcerned. There was something familiar about him. My heart was pumping so fast I was shaking.

  “Where’s the girl?” he demanded of Rocco. He had an almost female tone to his voice.

  Rocco cocked his head to the side. “It’s Norestrom, isn’t it? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Where’s the girl, mongrel?” Norestrom repeated more forcefully.

  “What girl? There aren’t any girls here.”

  Norestrom peered at Rocco through his red-rimmed glasses. “Listen, kid, we know the girl is here. All of your men are dead. Now, you can tell us where she is and you’ll live, or you can die and we’ll still find her. Which one is it?”

  Gunfire suddenly erupted at the back of the crowd, and I saw two of Norestrom’s men go down with a splat. One of the ailing guards had crawled out of bed from the basement and snuck behind them, taking two men down before getting shot himself.

  While Norestrom’s men had been distracted with the guard, Rocco had cocked his fist back and punched Norestrom right on the nose. Norestrom fell back like a rag doll. He slid to the floor and his head hit the ground with a thud.

  One of Norestrom’s men ran to his side but Norestrom shoved him away. Disoriented, Norestrom wobbled to a sitting position, his nose bleeding, and his glasses shattered on his face. He was incensed.

  “Kill him,” he ordered pinching his nose with two slender fingers.

  The heavy man immediately raised his weapon.

  Shots were fired.

  Rocco fell limp to the floor.

  In that moment, I felt like I’d been knocked out of my body. What I had seen … it couldn’t have happened. My vision blurred, but my eyes stayed on Rocco. I willed him to get back up, to fight back, to run. But he wasn’t moving. Red stains soaked the front of his gray T-shirt, and a puddle of burgundy was spreading around him.

  Thick fog had started creeping into my brain.

  Norestrom got up and brushed his hands over his khaki pants. “Find her and bring her to me, dead or alive,” he commanded and thought about it, “Preferably alive.”

  The men scurried and spread out, leaving Norestrom behind in the living room. Norestrom approached Rocco and kicked his lifeless body. Rocco didn’t react. Satisfied that Rocco wouldn’t attack him again, Norestrom bent over him and searched his pockets. He pulled out pieces of my Rocco’s world: screws and a nail, a napkin, a few peanuts, candy wrappers, and the cell phone.

  Norestrom flipped the cell phone open and quickly scanned the screen before the battery went completely dead. Then he bellowed, and his heavy assistant ran back to him.

  “He had time to call them. We don’t have much time,” Norestrom said. “Get the body out of here and make sure it’s the first thing they see when they drive in.” The heavyset man jumped and called for aid. They carried Rocco out of the living room, leaving a trail behind.

  Norestrom stood and scanned the pool of blood with a smug smile. When the heavy man came back and stood with him, Norestrom turned angry. “Go find the girl!”

  The two of them ran off through the kitchen doorway, and I heard their footsteps climbing the stairs up to Cameron’s room.

  The sound of things getting thrown around and broken rang through the house as the men searched high and low for me.

  But the living room was left empty.

  I didn’t have much time before they started pulling apart the living room to find me.

  In a daze, I opened the lid of the chest, crawled all the way to the patio door, sliding it open. I crept out into the night and crawled into the dark recess that had once been the site of my hidden first kiss with Cameron. I could hear men stomping
within the living room and kitchen now. I rolled myself under the deck’s railing, stuffing the pistol in the waistband of my shorts and clinging to the side as I heaved my body over. Hanging from my fingers, I dropped to the ground and immediately skidded away from the basement light, squeezing my body against the cold, brick wall.

  The basement patio door slid open, and a man stepped outside, glancing around. My heart pumped frantically as his gaze was slowly coming into my path.

  Gunfire erupted again, and flashes of light were coming through the windows of the basement bedrooms. One of the ailing guards, who had been too ill to get up, had surely been found and killed. The man rushed back into the house to view the action.

  Shadows were moving violently within the pool house. Carly’s world was now being ripped apart. Soon the men would start searching the grounds for me. With the moon and stars lighting up the landscape, I knew I would be exposed if I moved out of the shadow of the house. Taking one big breath, I darted across the grounds, praying that no one was watching.

  I managed to get near the trees without notice.

  Hopefulness started inching its way inside me, until I tripped.

  My foot had gotten caught. I pushed myself up through the long grass and staring back at me were dead eyes—eyes that I had once known, eyes of one of the guards who had been shot down by Norestrom’s men. A scream involuntarily left my lips, and I kicked, struggling to get my foot loose.

  In the distance, I heard a booming voice cry out.

  “She’s over here!” a man coming out of the pool house yelled. All of a sudden, every man looked out of the back windows of the house and started herding in my direction like a pack of hyenas.

  After I managed to struggle free from the dead guard’s grasp, I ducked into the dark woods.

  Branches slashed me in the face, and I pummeled full speed into a few tree trunks. I couldn’t see more than two feet in front of me but I could hear the men’s war cries and earth-stomping footsteps near and around me, so I didn’t stop. I kept running, often tripping over fallen logs and bushes. My legs were getting severely scratched and bruised. My hands were tattered. The adrenaline was pumping too fast for me to feel much, but after a while, my burning lungs were also starting to plot against me. Though my mind continued to speed through, my body was slowly giving up.